No. 115 Squadron was a Royal Canadian Air Force Canadian Home War Establishment (HWE) Squadron that operated during World War II.

Operational history

No. 115 Squadron flew anti-submarine patrols along the coasts of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska as part of Western Air Command. On 7 July 1942, Flight Sergeant PMG W. E. Thomas and the crew of Bristol Bolingbroke maritime patrol aircraft No. 9118 sighted a target breaking the surface and emitting white "smoke" in the Pacific Ocean 130 km northwest of the Queen Charlotte Islands. At first thinking it was a whale, they quickly concluded that they could see the underwater silhouette of submarine at least 100 ft in length and attacked, dropping a single 250 lb or 500 lb (sources disagree) bomb from an altitude of 500 ft which landed just forward of the submarine's conning tower. They claimed to have damaged the submarine. Based on the Bolingbroke's report, the United States Coast Guard cutter USCGC McLane (WSC-146), the U.S. Coast Guard-manned United States Navy patrol vessel USS YP-251, and the Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper HMCS Quatsino (J152) proceeded to the area on 9 July 1942 and began a search for the submarine, which McLane and YP-251 claimed to sink later that day. The Bolingbroke crew shared credit with McLane and YP-251 for the sinking, and in 1947 the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee identified their victim as the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine JAPANESE SUBMARINE Ro-32. In 1967, however, the U.S. Navy retracted this assessment because Ro-32 had been inactive in Japan at the time of the sinking and was found afloat in Japan at the end of the war. The submarine reportedly sunk on 9 July 1942 remains unidentified. No. 115 Squadron disbanded at Tolfino, British Columbia, in August 1944.

Equipment

The squadron's two-letter squadron code was BK from August 1939 to May 1942, then UV until the RCAF HWE discontinued the use of squadron codes on 16 October 1942 "for security reasons".

Footnotes